I joined pep band in college, but it wasn’t the same. I like the people, I love the people, but they’re not the same as my high school band friends. And I couldn’t replace those friends, so I had to find something else. I decided to join this mysterious but special sport of Rowing. Did you know that rowing is the oldest collegiate sport in the history of America? It started with Harvard vs. Yale, with boats made out of wood and seats that didn’t slide. Yea, that’s right–the seats slide. See, rowing isn’t actually about upper body strength. It’s all in the legs.

Rowing also has something called a coxswain, a person who sits in the boat and tells people what to do and steers the vessel. Here are a list of things that people say when I tell them that I’m on the rowing team and that I’m a coxswain:

• Oh, like “Row, row, row your boat?!”.
• You must have strong arms.
• So, do you guys practice in the lagoon?
• So, do you guys practice in the ocean?
• Did you see The Social Network?
• Haha, what do you say? “Row! Row! Row”?
• That’s a funny word. You’re a what? A cock-san?
• Okay, what kind of things do you say?

I can’t really explain to you what I say, friends. And that’s the interesting thing. I say a lot–there’s hardly ever a moment of silence during a race, but I can’t just tell you the things that I say. They come to mind as the race begins and they’re said as quickly as the synapses can connect my brain to my tongue. They’re gone the second they’re translated into vibrations in the air. Sure, we practice certain things, I learn to say certain things, but a good half of the things that I do say during a race are either made up on the fly or inspired by what is unfolding on the race course.

The people I have met through this sport are some pretty amazing people too. The sport of rowing doesn’t attract losers. The people who stick with rowing are mostly champions at life. I love the people on my team, even when they’re at their worst. Sometimes we go stir crazy and can’t stand each other, but that usually passes, and for the most part, being with the team is a great place to be.

I am happiest when I can feel the water running under an 8, guys. I’m really, truly happy there.

Rowing is a sport that attracts people who are champions at life.

I am part of that sport.

Therefore, I, too, might be a champion at life.

Today?

We’ll today, i’m only slightly better, but the interesting thing is that at least I have very distinct way of dressing that is “Jayne” and not just “Lesbian”. I never used to understand fashion, because it seemed silly to me to just put on nice clothes and feel nicer about yourself, but once I started doing it, I understood how that was a possibility. I started dressing nicer because I needed a self esteem boost and I thought that was the easiest route–turns out it was true! Dressing up just a notch above what I used to dress like changed my perspective on fashion entirely.

I’m currently subscribed to GQ Men’s Quarterly, because hello, I’m a lesbian. Women’s fashion doesn’t really do it for me. Like, I admire women’s fashion on other women because I think they look sexy as all hell in their jean shorts and over-sized, floral print button downs or sundresses and flipflops in the summer, but not on me. No, thank you. I prefer my plaid button-ups and jeans and v-necks and cardigans.

Men’s fall fashion is my favorite, because you can layer so many things. Men’s spring fashion makes me nervous because I still don’t have a great eye for color, but at least I can sort of kind of match things. I’d say my fashion sense isn’t entirely interesting, it’s just distinct. I wear a lot of cardigans and sweaters and when it’s warm I wear loose fitting v-necks. They’re casual clothes, but you can wear even a t-shirt and jeans and still have style (is what I’ve learned from GQ).

I like to think that sometimes my style is very similiar to Tom Hansen, Joseph Gordo-Levitt’s character in (500) Day of Summer, beezies. It’s just nice to have a few good collared shirts in addition to all the gay plaid I wear.

Anyway, this post is short because I have drinking to do.

Alright, here’s the deal fake audience. I’m not a musical expert. Nor do I have the skill in any area of music to be called talented. But I can play a few instruments and that is more than what most Americans can say for themselves. Under normal pretenses, when I’m not trying to appreciate myself, I would have said that I don’t think I’m qualified to be called a musician, because I lack any real skill.

But this is A Lesson in Discovery and in order to discovery who we are we should make claims and today I am claiming that I am a musician. That’s right. I am a pretentious, woman-stealing musician. And here is a list of instruments I can play, have played, and continue to play on a regular basis, listed in chronological order of the time I learned each instrument.

1. Flute
2. Saxophone
3. Clarinet
4. Trumpet
5. Violin
6. Guitar
7. Piano
8. Harmonica
9. Ukulele

Here’s a disclaimer though. While I can play all of those instruments, I am by no means good at them. The saxophone and clarinet were more of experiments when my friends were in band with me. Nonetheless, I continue to be interested by musical possibilities these instruments possess and I would love to further my education in the ways that they produce sound. The piano is hard. It takes so much time, time I just don’t have. But I do have an electronic keyboard and I enjoy watching YouTube and learning songs like “Don’t Stop Believing” and “When You Were Young”. Additionally, harmonica is so easy anybody can do it. You blow out or suck in air and you make a note, and if you get a really good harmonica, the instrument does half of the work for you!

I started playing the flute in 4th grade. I really wanted to learn how to play the drums, but that was an insanely loud and expensive impossibility, so my aunt gave me her flute and I learned to play that. Bitches and faux-pals, I was good. I played that thing until 7th grade. There’s a picture of me at a concert sitting in first chair. Proof! And then I decided to quit  band because the teacher was kind of a bitch and all of my friends were doing Yearbook which was during the same period. So, I went up until 10th grade without any kind of formal training music.

When I moved to Irvine, though, imaginary audience, I fell into a crowd of kids who weren’t very high on the high-school hierarchy ladder. I wanted to do band again, so I went to the offices of Mr. V and Mr. A and asked them if I could join the marching band come summer before Sophomore year and they said, well there’ll be a lot of flutes but you can switch to trumpet if you’re game enough. And I said, hell yea I’m game enough! But more like, okay, it’s in treble clef and sounds cool, how hard could it be? Absentee Beezies, it was so hard. Trumpet and Flute have about as much in common as a gay guy and a lesbian. Nothing, except that they all know you’ve gotta use your mouth. But that’s besides the point.

I also had to take up a regular concert band or orchestra during the year, it was some marching band rule or something, and I’ve always wanted to play violin, so I took that up too! Isn’t that amazing, beezies? I was learning two instruments at once! I was such a badass. Really. Because who plays violin & trumpet? Band nerds, meh. Whatever. In any case, I did those two things and steadily climbed the ranks in Band and Orchestra until my senior year. By senior year I was both in the top band, the second Jazz band, Marching Band, and our second Orchestra. Ladies and Gentlemen, I was a musician stud.

I loved music, then. When it was simple and easy and all you had to do was repeat one thing over and over again a slightly different way until it sounded just right. Rehearsals weren’t chores for me; they were the best part of my day. I loved music so much, then. I still love music now, but it’s different because I’m not structured in that regard and because it lost a little bit of its magic when I let drama get in the way of the things that I wanted. I realize now that it’s stupid, and throughout A Lesson in Discovery hopefully I’ll be able to let go completely.

I still continue to play the trumpet in the all glorious, ever offensive UCSB Gaucho Pep Explosion. But these days I find myself picking up any remotely inexpensive solo instrument to find some sort of solace. It started with the guitar, which I always found to be studly. Learning the guitar has been an adventure and I still continue to learn on it. I got a harmonica (cheap, too for like 5 bucks!) and started playing on that, but I think I left it at my mom’s house. I would love to get another one and jam on it during spring break.

My recent baby is the Ukulele. It’s been a fun ride. I wanted one ever since my sister got it because it was such a happy little instrument. It’s become more mainstream and stuff which is also cool, but kind of annoying, but I don’t mind, it means that tutorials shoot up like wildfire on YouTube. My favorite thing about the Uke is that I can bring it almost anywhere. I’m excited to just sit by the pool and lazily strum out chords during Spring Training. You can’t go wrong with lazily strumming chords on a uke. It just sounds so pleasant.

My name is Jayne Quan, and I am Pretentious Musician.

That is always going to be interesting, because people are always fascinated by music whether they admit it or not. I think the biggest thing for non-musicians is just the fact that we can turn little dots on lines into something so pleasing to the ear. It’s another language, a truly universal language, and that’s the pretentious part. I mean, musicians think they’re all knowing connector of humanity.

While this blog is devoted to appreciating the things I have, I never want to be an asshole about it. There needs to be a sense of humility. So while yes, music and musicians are, in some ways, a connector of humanity, we can’t really stake any claim on that. All music is different–music isn’t a universal language. It’s a supplement to our languages.

This is Jayne Quan, the Student, signing off faux-friends.

And I am a Pretentious Musician.

I present to you my first awkward performance. I guess WordPress makes you pay for an upgrade to be able to upload any audio, which is kind of lame, but whatever, I’m already here, so why change?

Here I am, for the first time ever, on the internet, getting over the flu, singing and playing the ukulele.

I’m Yours (an Excerpt), Jason Mraz

This is already awkward for me, because I don’t really like myself. But I feel like it’s the way that I need to go about doing this. I grew up on the internet, imaginary friends–I was nine when we first got Dial-Up and I discovered a gateway to lulz. All my important  growing up happened here, and I feel like this is fitting.

Currently, I have no followers, nobody to listen to me talk about myself. Which is nice, because I find that I’m not super interesting. But I think that this is one of the things I should attempt (and anybody should attempt, really) to change about myself, because every person is interesting in their own right, and I should find the things that people might be interested in and emphasize those things.

Let’s start there. With the things that make me interesting. For the next week, from today, February 3rd until February 10th, I will talk about 7 things that make me interesting. Why they make me interesting. What’s unique about it. And who the fuck would ever think that’s interesting and or unique. Here’s what we should have to look forward to, internet amoebas!

1. February 3rd: I am a minority of minorities!
2. February 4th: Here’s a pretentious list of instruments I can vaguely play!
3. February 5th: I have fashion, don’t I?
4. February 6th: Superbowl Sunday?! Let’s talk about my team!
5. February 7th: Mondays are hard, let’s keep it light by talking about where I work!
6. February 8th: Let’s talk about all of my eclectic tastes in music!
7. February 9th: I’m also mysterious and slightly dark, so I’ll explore what my favorite book is and why!
8. February 10th: Nothing says more about a person than their future goals and ambitions!

It’s the Lunar New Year, which is commonly (though albeit wrongly) referred to as Chinese New Year. Which is dumb, because hello, the Chinese aren’t the only people who celebrate Lunar New Year–in fact, most of the Asian cultures do. To lump them all as Chinese is not only disrespectful towards history but also vaguely racist!

In any case, I am part Chinese. Which doesn’t seem like a minority, since there are more of me in the world then there are of anybody else. But I’m also part Filipino, which in itself is interesting, because a lot of people couldn’t point out the Philippines on a map! Did you know, fake audience, that in the Philippines spelled with a ‘p’, they are Filipino spelled with an ‘f’ and they can speak Tagalog which… well starts with at ‘t’. Weird, right!? So weird, faux-friends!

So why is this interesting? Well, firstly, because Asian cultures aren’t really big into inter-racial marriages, even just across other Asian cultures. Fortunately for me, my parents are pretty Americanized, but it’s still pretty unusual considering I’m first generation on my mom’s side. My dad’s side is less peculiar considering I’m third generation. What does this mean, absentee-white-readers? It means that, on my mom’s side, I’m the first generation born in the U.S.–she immigrated here from the Philippines when she was in third grade. On my dad’s side, I’m the third generation to be born in the U.S.–my grandpa was first, my dad was second, and I’m third! Makes sense, right?

In all, Asian cultures are very proud people–they don’t like to share their history with others. It’s something I’ve learned based on experience. Asian people don’t really like sharing… actually. They kind of just like hoarding all the cool things like really awesome technology and fast cars and emotions and brutal histories… But I digress. Most Asian cultures marry within their race. So, my ethnicity is kind of uncommon. But not too uncommon, after all, out of all the Asian cultures, Filipinos are the most likely to marry outside of their race. Interesting stuff, huh?

But, that’s not even the half of it, imaginary pals, I’m also a lesbian gay! Here’s the deal. Asian cultures are very traditional. Filipinos are kind of like Mexicans because they were colonized by Spaniards a long time ago, and with their bronze skin and interesting accents they also brought with them Catholicism. Catholicism is like Christianity but it’s all based on the old testament stuff, which, in layman’s terms, means they’re more strict about what they believe. Which means homosexuality, like in most religions, is bad news bears! My mother went to Catholic school and who knows what my father believes in, but still–I can’t deny the fact that I come from an Asian background, so being a lesbian gay is king of interesting and mostly uncommon!

Why do I keep striking out the L-word? Is it for some self-satisfied justice based on how the television series ended? Nay, interweb-purveyors! It’s merely a self-garnered dislike for the word. I’d much rather say gay because “lesbian” sounds dirty. And it has too many syllables! And as a lesbian gay girl, I’m always interesting in how things roll of the tongue–the word “lesbian” just doesn’t do it for me. But enough, about the word, let’s talk about one of the only gay, Chinese-Filipino girls most of my friends have ever met!

Minorities are a funny thing in America. They just don’t have a voice to represent them soundly! But you know what, it’s kind of great to be a minority in America, because you sort of represent the lost everything that America once stood for. As a semi-interracial, athiest, gay, young adult living in California, I represent religious freedom, cultural freedom, and sexual freedom. Although, not many Americans see it this way–mostly they see me and they probably think I’m a heathen, hell-bent on ruining our nation’s image, when really, they don’t know shit about what our nation was founded on! Stupid majorities! Stay awake in your history classes!

But I digress again, faux-pals. My name is Jayne Quan–I am part Chinese, part Filipino, and probably a whole lot of other junk that got mixed in there when cultures started colonizing everything! I’m also gay as a rainbow, and these are all interesting things about me. Things that I’ve accepted and have every bit learned to appreciate.

Until next time, when I awkwardly talk about myself, imaginary internet pals!